[Warren] says the criticism of him in the wake of his selection has been characterized by “a lot of hate speech” and by “Christophobia — people who are afraid of any Christian. Our nation is being destroyed by the demonization of differences.”…He reiterated his opposition to same sex marriage, but said he is in agreement with “the view of the vast majority of the world and the vast majority of religions.”

And the view of the vast majority is necessarily right on any given subject and not to be disputed or declared unconstitutional or in violation of human rights. Unless of course the vast majority disagrees with Rick Warren, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. The point now is that disagreement with Rick Warren is entirely illegitimate on a variety of grounds, also known as, any port in a storm.

“Free speech has to be free speech for everybody,” he says. “Some people feel today if you disagree with them that’s hate speech.”

Er – yes – as in the bit where he said ‘the criticism of him in the wake of his selection has been characterized by “a lot of hate speech” and by “Christophobia”‘…How quickly he seems to forget.

“I’m doing this because I love America and it’s a historic opportunity and it’s an honor to be a part of any inauguration of any president,” he says.

Indeed it is, and that’s exactly why we don’t want Warren to have the honor. We think he’s the wrong kind of person for a Democratic president to give that kind of honor. In fact a lot of us think he’s the wrong kind of person for any president to give that kind of honor at a secular government ceremony.

*Literalist fundies don’t go in for no women preachers, so ‘him’ is the right pronoun.

He already is. I daresay Obama is regretting the whole thing now…but he won’t drop him. (He can’t very well. Even I don’t think he should drop him, because it’s too late for that. But he should never have invited him.)

It’s convenient, though, that Mr. Ricky has a bit of extra pre-inauguration slack rope to hang himself with by making idiotic pronouncements. Not very reflective a fellow is he? “Demonization of differences. . .” That is rich.

I think “Christophobia” is the wrong construction. I don’t think he thought it through before he introduced it. (God, I hope it’s not a conventional term). I parse it as “fear of Christ” or “fear of Christo.” I would make “christian-o-phobia” the word for fear of christians.

I hate the idea of a speaker w/o a good command of morphology being allowed to invoke at the inauguration.

Yeah I was just thinking that, and saying it in a comment elsewhere. At least Mr Ricky is getting a lot of unwelcome attention now, and fewer people will be fooled in future into thinking he’s not so bad for an evangelical type. Ohhhhhhhh yes he is.